Archive for November, 2009

When I talk about love and infatuation and everything in between, I am talking about {design}. You and I, we’re all part of a blueprint to grasp micro-chaos – the systematic kind – of all the bolts and levers set into motion, one oiled cog spinning after the other, teetering at the edge of senselessness.

I am talking about a plan that perpetuates itself in the form of heart palpitations and scarlet jolts. It flashes from one scene to another like a fluent slideshow, one-to-five: exhibition (a) attraction; (b) yearning; (c) passion; (d) tenderness; (e) compassion – a neat, resounding click with each switch, and each scene with its own characteristics, sweaty palms, stuttered pronunciation, lips lickety-spit-drip dry. An arm slung lazily over a torso and damp blankets. A snowflake kiss on a freckled cheek. And finally: flesh lifting flesh before the flickering television screen, wrapped in a nebula haze (and the walls were painted with an animated neon colour, don’t you know?)

And no, no – it’s a machine, not a river, not butterflies. Spontaneity is the enemy of love and desire – when I talk about love and all of the trailing dregs, blame it for the uncontrollable and the stoically biological. We follow each stage blindly, feeling through the world under the comforting guise of chance encounters (you didn’t mind the iron when it was covered in silk, a lukewarm bullet in your hand), the ‘it just happened’ when you knew – your body knew – that there is no resolve or will, no lady luck impulsively pressing two bodies together, no fortuity, no triumph in falling the way the dominoes all did (neatly in a row, perfect synchronization). We are damp clay with fingers kneading into our flesh, and we are makeshift pieces of jigsaw puzzle looking to cement onto another like parasites, joining, multiplying, infesting.

When I talk about love and infatuation and everything in between, I am not talking about anything other than a hard process or an overplayed scene. It is prolonged car crash; your head jerks forward, your spinal cord juts, your arm twists like a bent fork and ruptures in the impact – and you can watch at all this and say – this, this was all just part of the {design}.